There was a brouhaha last week over this site and I'm just now learning about it. Apparently a number of authors noticed their ebooks being mentioned on the site and freaked out. Everyone seems to have jumped to the conclusion that the site was pirating ebooks.

Was that happening on lendink?

The site is down now, so I cannot check myself. But I still want to know what really happened.

I used Lendink a few times (not very successfully, as the site was mostly abandoned by its creator and didn't have many users.) It was just another lending site, similar to the ones discussed on this thread -- all of which are way more popular.

I found out yesterday about the brouhaha and find the whole situation very ridiculous. People went on the attack without understanding what the site was.

OK, the site's interface wasn't too clear on some aspects.
When you did a search and found a book:
if it had copies available then you could send a request to the book's owner, who could then go on Amazon/BN and lend the book.
If no copies were available, then you could still see a grayed out button to "request to borrow" the book... Then you'd get a message that the book would be added to your "watchlist" in case it became available later, but people assumed that all books listed were being pirated by the site.

I still think that the FAQ made it mostly clear that they didn't host any books and were just a matching site for lenders and borrowers.

Anyway, people went crazy and the site has either been taken down or collapsed due to traffic. Some were justifying things because Amazon sent a reply saying that Lendink wasn't authorized to host files or lend books -- and that's true, but Lendink wasn't doing either of those things.
All lending happened through the Amazon or BN site.

If anything, I think ebookfling works on a grayer area as they actually sell their "book credits".

My name is Dale Porter and I am the owner of Lendink (or what's left of it). I can say without hesitation that Lendink was not a pirate site, we did not store, transfer, lend or publish any ebooks, period! All we did was attempt to provide a means for people that enjoy their ebooks to meet other like minded people and share their "lend" enabled ebooks. The lending process was completely handled on the Amazon or Barnes and Noble websites.

Lendink was operated solely by myself and operated the last couple of years with absolutely no income.

There is a lot of misinformation on the internet claiming that we hosted ebooks illegally, that Amazon did not allow us to lend ebooks, etc. Let me try to address some of those here.

Amazon did not allow us to lend ebooks. This is a 100% true statement and the fact of the matter is, Lendink did not nor did it ever attempt to lend ebooks. All we did was put person A in touch with person B and redirected A and B back to Amazon or Barnes and Nobles where the actual lending took place.

Lendink was hosting ebooks illegally. This statement is 100% false. We never hosted any ebooks on our servers. We attempted to dispell this rumor on our FAQ page and for those that actually read the page, it usually cleared up the misunderstanding. For those that did not read the page, all I can assume is that is simply doesn't matter at this point. No amount of explaination would have satisfied the vultures looming over head.

The Lendink website is down, this is proof they were pirating ebooks. Really, this is proof that we were pirating ebooks? The fact of the matter is that our host company was so overwhelmed with hate mail and threats of lawsuits that they felt they had no choice but to suspend the site. These hatefull people did nothing but harass and threaten Lendink and our host company to the point that it just didn't make sense to keep the site online.

Amazon dropped Lendink as an Affiliate due to digital rights violations or new digital rights laws in California. This is 100% false. Lendink is a California based company and as such, was cut off from earning money from sales when Amazon and the State of California disagreed over the collection of State Sales Tax. Amazon cut off all of their California affiliates from earning money via their affiliate program. It was not just Lendink. This only prevented us from earning money via Amazon. It did not however stop use from matching people for book lending.

I am simply a hard working guy that was trying to provide a legit service. Let me ask you all this, if I truley intended to use Lendink as a pirate site would I keep my contact information clearly associated with the site? Would I form an LLC and run the site as a business? Would I actually take the time to file for and receive a Federal Trademark for the site? These are not the actions of a person bent on stealing other persons intellectual property. The site had been negelected the past year or so and this was due to health issues related to my service connected injuries. Working a fulltime job to pay the bills and helath issues just took their toll on me and unfortunately the site suffered. My plan was to ride out the Amazon vs. California Sales Tax dispute and then pick up when I was able to make some income from the sale of books. Sadly, it appears that my American Dream has been left as road kill at the hands of misguided individuals.

These are not the actions of a person bent on stealing other persons intellectual property.

Most of the folks around this forum are pretty quick to see what's really going on, this is not the audience you need to convince. Unfortunately, as you said, the people you need to convince don't seem to listen.

Though, by the way, your quoted reasoning above doesn't work too well...there are an awful lot of idiots whole indulge in blatant violations and think they are 'covering themselves' (or maybe they just think they are fooling somebody) by posting stuff like "No Copyright Infringement Intended" or "This is Fair Use under US Code Title xxx.xxx"

Quote:

Sadly, it appears that my American Dream has been left as road kill at the hands of misguided individuals.

Dale

Surely you can find a provider that that won't cave to uninformed ranting?

As others have said, MobileRead isn't the best place for your post because, with some exceptions, the people here are pretty quick to pick up on copyright related issues.

The angry mob you really need to convince are the ones that your post (succinct and informative though it is) won't be able to. The authors are mad about anyone that can read their books without paying, even if it results in more people overall buying their books. These are people that will swear up a storm whenever they see used copies of their books up for sale on eBay. These are people that will scream "piracy" because they want to believe its piracy, not because they have a legitimate understanding of copyright law.

This is a real travesty, but isn't too surprising. It's just too bad ignorance managed to trump what looked to be an interesting service.

I have to laugh at the intelligence of these authors who do not understand the meaning of their ebooks being "lending enabled" and become rabid when their books show up on a site dedicated to lending books.

Another argument against making it too easy for everyone to access web services. When facebook and twitter are embedded in just about anything electronic, it make it too easy for the idiots to mass together.

"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."

My name is Dale Porter and I am the owner of Lendink (or what's left of it). I can say without hesitation that Lendink was not a pirate site, we did not store, transfer, lend or publish any ebooks, period! All we did was attempt to provide a means for people that enjoy their ebooks to meet other like minded people and share their "lend" enabled ebooks. The lending process was completely handled on the Amazon or Barnes and Noble websites.

Lendink was operated solely by myself and operated the last couple of years with absolutely no income.

There is a lot of misinformation on the internet claiming that we hosted ebooks illegally, that Amazon did not allow us to lend ebooks, etc. Let me try to address some of those here.

Amazon did not allow us to lend ebooks. This is a 100% true statement and the fact of the matter is, Lendink did not nor did it ever attempt to lend ebooks. All we did was put person A in touch with person B and redirected A and B back to Amazon or Barnes and Nobles where the actual lending took place.

Lendink was hosting ebooks illegally. This statement is 100% false. We never hosted any ebooks on our servers. We attempted to dispell this rumor on our FAQ page and for those that actually read the page, it usually cleared up the misunderstanding. For those that did not read the page, all I can assume is that is simply doesn't matter at this point. No amount of explaination would have satisfied the vultures looming over head.

The Lendink website is down, this is proof they were pirating ebooks. Really, this is proof that we were pirating ebooks? The fact of the matter is that our host company was so overwhelmed with hate mail and threats of lawsuits that they felt they had no choice but to suspend the site. These hatefull people did nothing but harass and threaten Lendink and our host company to the point that it just didn't make sense to keep the site online.

Amazon dropped Lendink as an Affiliate due to digital rights violations or new digital rights laws in California. This is 100% false. Lendink is a California based company and as such, was cut off from earning money from sales when Amazon and the State of California disagreed over the collection of State Sales Tax. Amazon cut off all of their California affiliates from earning money via their affiliate program. It was not just Lendink. This only prevented us from earning money via Amazon. It did not however stop use from matching people for book lending.

I am simply a hard working guy that was trying to provide a legit service. Let me ask you all this, if I truley intended to use Lendink as a pirate site would I keep my contact information clearly associated with the site? Would I form an LLC and run the site as a business? Would I actually take the time to file for and receive a Federal Trademark for the site? These are not the actions of a person bent on stealing other persons intellectual property. The site had been negelected the past year or so and this was due to health issues related to my service connected injuries. Working a fulltime job to pay the bills and helath issues just took their toll on me and unfortunately the site suffered. My plan was to ride out the Amazon vs. California Sales Tax dispute and then pick up when I was able to make some income from the sale of books. Sadly, it appears that my American Dream has been left as road kill at the hands of misguided individuals.